PATH+ "What the Qasidah Sees" with Lubna Safi

Speaker(s): Lubna Safi (University of California, Berkeley)

 
What the Qaṣīdah Sees: Vision and the Poetic Image in Maghribī and Andalusī Poetics
 
This talk will answer the question of what the qaṣīdah sees by examining the relationship between poetic representation and visual perception. In both Andalusī and modern Maghribī poetics, the terms that characterize poetry are visual. On takhyīl (image-evocation) and ruʾya (vision) respectively, hinges the possibility of poetry as knowledge. The talk aims to explore the confluence of the poetic image, vision, and knowledge as a way to inflect our understanding of the evolving role of poetry.
 
Lubna Safi received her B.A. in English Literature from Indiana University, Bloomington and her M.A in Comparative Literature from The Pennsylvania State University. Her work focuses on classical and medieval Arabic poetry and poetics—particularly its reception by 20th and 21st century Arabic and Spanish poetry—and rethinks the relation between classical and modern texts within the Arabic literary tradition. She is also interested in the ways in which the qaṣīdah has been adapted as a transhistorical and transcultural form and its relationship to other poetic forms. Her academic interests include intertextuality, translation studies, Critical Theory, post colonial and feminist theory as well as theories of aesthetics.
 
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